On this episode, Teri-Denise reflects on the importance of personal privacy, questioning why private experiences and health decisions are often judged or exposed by others. She also discusses how society treats issues like addiction, reproductive rights, and the legal system, encouraging listeners to think critically, show compassion, and respect the personal choices and struggles of others.

The opinions and views expressed in this program, are those of the participants and do not reflect the official positions of Lansing Community College, its administration, or WLNZ.

Hello there. This is Teri-Denise, a Lansing Community College student and your host of RIPPER, an LCC Connect podcast where I interview others and ask about their unique efforts and connections in, around and beyond the community of Michigan's Capital City.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Terry Denise from RIPPER.

There have been a lot of actual recordings I've done, so there's just multiple sessions that I'm doing and some of these I'm just stacking up and just letting you know who I am because it seems like there are a lot of people that think I am this wonderful mystery. I don't know so much about the wonderful, but definitely a mystery. And that's okay.

I like to keep it that way because there aren't many things that I need to be telling any and everybody about about myself. Some things I let known, but some things I don't. And that is perfectly fine.

I don't know where we became in this society where your privacy somehow became somebody else's property. And I'm having a lot of issues with that. I don't know if anybody's ever been to court.

If you've ever been to divorce court, you probably know about discover or discovery, the process where lawyers mount basically and extract as much information about you as possible to try to put blame and humiliate you in front of everyone.

So if you ever like, I don't know, crashed into a cop car and you were drunk and this happened when you were like 18 years old or something, that will be brought into court if somebody feels that it's necessary to exploit your matters.

But you being in court because of divorcing an individual, it's just kind of things in that nature where it's just trying to pull the worst parts of your life out. And by the way, no, that's not a thing that's happened to me.

It's definitely happened to people, though, as it tends to do in the state that we live in that prides itself a lot on drinking a lot, especially when you're younger, which I have found to be a bit problematic in probably why particular things and areas of my life have not been made in the best manner. I know we have a government official right now that literally would have rather certain substances be not legalized or at least I'll just.

Yeah, alcohol versus cannabis is kind of an issue for a lot of people. Right.

I don't Know why Seeing as how alcohol for many many years especially in America where there was a whole movement for people to not drink which brought about a lot of people then heavily drinking and drinking really terrible things more than possible with the trying to get rid of alcohol as an entirety. People sought out the worst kinds of substance abuse.

Then on top of just trying to mask and hide and corrupt officials actually drinking on the side the whole prohibition era. And I mean we see the movies and we see our versions of what we think that looks like nowadays and what it was while people were living in it.

And we have these telltales and many movies that were being made while the prohibition acts were going on that the shoot em ups like Cagney and whatnot all the gangsters and living in the state of Michigan. We know that if you don't know a lot of our.

A lot of the vast areas around here were used to Upstate and lower state were used as hideouts for a lot of the gangsters back in the day. So there had been stories of people finding treasure troves of old stored liquor back in the day. But yeah. So when.

When one thinks about the things that they've gone through that somebody might pull out to try to humiliate a person and you base that within a framework of well, this entire state and like the. There's a lot of drinking culture around us and to do it really early and it's just a weird thing. It's a very complex thing.

I personally have issues with it the older I get because it's like yeah, you put fun in all these commercials and ad space for people to start drinking and smoking early. But it's like.

But you only want people to drink these things and smoke that thing as opposed to anything else that you don't say that they shouldn't be partaking in simply because you said so. And there's no reason why anybody should be partaking in those things anyway. Regardless.

There's a lot of though over culture that's stinted in very very ancient practices with a lot of other people with substances that just happen to be very illegal in the states just so happen to be illegal.

Certain subst that have anything to do with certain people's cultures and ancient backgrounds and beliefs and is rooted in their actual way that they may partake in with community efforts with benefits with participation in certain kind of spiritualistic qualities. But just so happens that certain things like that are banned but the thing that rots your entire belly, that's fine, go ahead.

The thing that people cause the most damage in accidents on the highways and roads with the things that people can drink themselves to death with or can over overstimulate themselves with to the point of death, whether they quit it or not. Yeah, let's, let's, let's ham it in there. Let's, let's drive it in there. Cool. Now, I'm not a spokesperson for sober or anything like that.

I am not here to. I am not. This is not a judging, throwing shame in anybody particulars way.

I'm just getting a focus in on what the factuals are and what's presented to us.

Why, why is, I don't know, having some state officials that believe that drinking is a more proficient and upstanding way to support rather than certain people just finding more medical benefits in a particular way is kind of interesting and kind of really weird. And a lot of it's stinted of course in racism. Yay. No, for real though, it is jazz cigarettes. Hmm. Okay. That's not racist at all anyway.

Or the wacky tobacky or the, you know, it's beyond the border kind of things. Anything that one can tack on to a certain culture and try to demonize is wrapped in absolute terror were rising racism. That is where it is.

And that's why there's so many unhealthy ways that people have treated themselves.

Because I mean, get into the introduction of even like with Britain and how the imperialism era over in China and India, how they treated the economy over in China and we're just basically like, hey, we really like your tea, we really like your silk. We really like all of these kind of spices in the trade route going hundreds of years ago.

And they were like, hey, we're spending a lot of money on a silk scarves here and silk thread. Like we need to be making our money back. Let's introduce opium into this country over here. And opium became a crisis.

There became wars that were fought because of opium use and opium trading and underground trading, making it a lucrative benefit for a lot of other people, but at the cost of pushing people into addiction. And that was simply because of greed. It was just money. That was it.

There were people that from the Brits, the imperialistic fashion just did not like the fact that certain countries were making money off of them based upon things that had nothing to do with being addictive at all, that weren't in fact gutting a person's kidneys. They in fact were just.

They were just these natural things that much like other substances just straight from the ground picked From a tree, a leaf, a tea leaf, some chai. And somebody saw that as, like, hey, wait, you're making too much money off of me. And I really don't like it.

But, like, my duchess over here really wants another dress, so I'm going to have to try to make that money back and do it in the schemiest way possible, like, for real. This is what we've been dealing with for hundreds of years, and it's hopefully going to come to its end sooner than later.

Benefiting off of people's strife is a terrible thing, and I really, really cannot wait until consequences show for this terrible. I don't know, the terrible trade that people have come into being.

When you sit there and you say, hey, we'll give you a free ride if you just say that you have alcohol or addiction, substance abuse problems, we'll get you into school for free. We'll get you in a house, we'll get you any and everything that you need. We'll get you a really good job.

All you have to do is just be an addict and admit that and go to these classes and undertake this role. So at one end you have like, hey, we're going to prop up distribution, alcohol sales and all, all that kind of stuff.

And at the other end, it's like, oh, by the way, sorry you became an addict. Whoops. Here, we'll give you more things now, but if you fall off, you know, oh, well, I don't know. Sucks to be your liver, I guess.

You know, moving on to actually not moving completely on, but just going off on a different rail here. One of the things that changed my perspective on my own body and what I put into it was looking at the human body exhibit.

The one that I saw was in Chicago. This was many, many years ago, almost 20 years ago now. And it changed my life.

If you haven't visited this particular exhibit, I believe sometimes it travels around. But the last I knew, there was a stationary one in Chicago at one of the art museums there.

And basically you go around this elaborate, elaborate setup of different stages of the body. So you'll start out at. And these have come from. Well, they say they're from donated persons to science.

But I guess maybe through the years that there have been some possibly not possibly people that have been trafficked. And I don't know, that's just hearsay.

But anyway, so for the most part, I went in thinking that these were donated bodies for the purpose of science and art. So let's start out that way. So in the exhibit There are, it's not just the humans.

There's like horses and there's different animals, but it starts out with the beginning of life. So you'll see different cells, different sex cells and organs. You start out and you see a zygote. You see it before it splits into two cells.

And then you see the pattern of the splitting going on. The stages of becoming a child, basically. So not an infant, not a child.

It's just, they're just, you're just seeing cells, you're seeing sex cells become a being, but not necessarily a being. It's just another forming of another cell, another organism. So along these stages, these are presented under.

There's a huge kind of way that the art took place to preserve these particular kinds of cells. And as I go on with the organs and other body parts, so there's a way that they used to preserve all of these stages.

And you see when you get to like 10 weeks, what an embryo starts to look like. And then it moves on and on. And then you start to see like, wow, man, three months, it still looks like that.

You're like, these are aliens within our bodies. They're just so weird looking. But then you realize that humans in fact are weird looking.

When you look at the entire animal kingdom, we are one of the strangest looking creatures anyway. So you keep seeing the embryos go along and along.

And finally by, you know, the ending of the stages, around the 30 week area, you'll see the third trimester area that, yeah, it's, it's like you shape up, you start looking at it, it's like, wow, that's kind of a human right there a little bit. And then it starts making you think about like family planning and you're like, oh, I get it. Planned Parenthood, that's a thing.

And it took my perspective of, you know, what Planned Parenthood is. And it's like, oh, they actually teach you about these stages.

But here, like watching the human exhibit in front of me, it makes me think about certain things, about the aspect of life in a completely different way. And this is not like I'm not speaking on any kind of particular way in how anyone feels about birthing or anything.

I'm more speaking about the life cells themselves along certain ways. And my perspective, I saw that stage right there. I don't know if I want to carry anything like that for too long to that point.

And if I am making that decision, I better be making it and I better be making it with the correct person that wants to see it. Through with me along these stages.

I'm not going to use my body to carry along this little creature here for this long, to just not care about it, to just have things fall apart at the end.

And that even if, like, there's a terrible thing that comes into where, you know, there's a loss somewhere along the stages that to see it in full form outside of my own body and not be attached to something like that, it gave a perspective of like, oh no, there is indeed an attachment for me particularly. So the choices that I make are going to be based upon what I feel about just seeing something like that.

So it made me recollect, you know, things that are. Could be going on in my life, but just seeing everything in a different way.

And it's just like, okay, so if I get to a certain stage, then I have to be prepared. I have to know that my partner is going to be prepared and that we want to see this through with each other and actually get through this.

And if there's anything that happens, it's like, try again. You know, it's like, let's take our bereavement stages.

But if this is something that we both want to come together with, like, to become one and the essence of like your third one forms your whole full one unit. That's. That's the idea and the goal. And then whatever you add on to your, Your whole if you want to do so. Yeah, add on to the whole. The.

Your whole brooding thing going on there. Your whole station of, of little beings and whatnot. But for me personally, I don't care about what other people choose.

That is not my voice for anybody else to make and it shouldn't be for anybody else.

Coming again, once again to the privacy issue, I don't understand when what is going on for me to be attached to some cells that are forming in my own body, how that becomes anybody else besides my partner or just me and my doctor? Anybody else's particular. It's private. I don't understand.

I'm trying to actually just figure out what it could be in another person's brain that makes it seem like they feel like they should be making any kind of judgments or decisions for what is going on in my personal body and space. So that's my strangling opinion on that. Especially for those that. And I'm a child of someone who. I was supposed to have an older sibling.

Unfortunately, they were lost before I was born and before they even were fully born. And to go through that, to carry full term, to Lose one that you were, that you already had things picked out for that.

There's a crib, that there's a setup for it for anybody to go through and then try to put one in jail or try to put a fine on you for that.

Not going and living their life because it's, it didn't come to its full life in termination is one of the most despicable things that are going on right now. And it's impacting so many different kinds of people and a lot of it is coming out of sexism and racism and it needs to stop.

To live in this age where people are still like, yeah, let's keep going on and drinking and oh, I got a DUI or DWI or somebody went out and they literally laid out an entire birthday party and it's just like, oh, okay, well we'll see what you get. Manslaughter. But to put a person in prison at all because they had a miscarriage. Yeah.

People keep wondering where, where, why are, what, what's going on? Why, why are things becoming this way? How could we have lost so many rights and everything? And it's just like, what were you doing this entire time?

Because I know that I had been working to sustain a life that came out of a lot of abuse and I'm still getting out of that, I'm still trying to get away from it, but I keep working. You heard me in a different kind of session that I had where I was exhausted. That's why I sounded that way on the mic.

It's because I was tired, I was working a lot, I was on the road, my eyes had been peeled open. So just to make sure that I didn't fall asleep on the road while I was driving.

Not because I was drunk or on any substances, but because I was simply working that hard so I could try to keep moving. Because there was times that I did not want to move anymore. Uh huh. Because that's what happens in this day and age.

Because people try so hard to be this person that they're just trying to survive through and then they get hit with, oh, by the way, you got a miscarriage and you have to go to court because you have a miscarriage, Things like that, you know, it makes you wonder like, well, why am I here? To have just gone through this thing?

So when a person is, is legit, just kind of like trying to get and pry into your personal possessions, trying to take you and humiliate you for everything that you have ever gone through and try to put that on some kind of level and platform to demean you, to take anything that you've worked hard for, to outright spill rumors out about who you are and your nature and your character and your semblance as a being is wrought. It's human rot. It's a form of rotting, and it's a form of some kind of viral nature and vile nature which must be medicated.

It needs to be driven out of our state, our economy, our environment, the way that we treat each other, the way that we're treating our children, the expectations that we're putting on them.

To learn way too much about what's going on in the world and then to not have to learn anything about how to even, I don't know, prepare a meal for yourself, even to learn how to wash your own clothes, to not be so dependent on technology to get you through and to critically think about things. Because I'll tell you something, I don't think a person who would send a person to prison over a miscarriage is critically thinking.

I also don't think that a person who would outright tell another person when they're seeking out a PPO and have laid their entire lives out on the line for everyone in a courtroom that becomes public knowledge then because it gets submitted into summons and that's doctrine and that's proof and that's evidence and people can forever look into cases. I don't think a person who is telling their entire life story and about the abuse that they've suffered.

I don't think anybody, especially a judge, that tells you, I don't believe you and you need to get out of my court because you're wasting it. I don't believe you deserve a ppo. Yeah, I don't think that's a person that critically thinks either.

And we've been seeing how that fails so tremendously with children ending up on the side of the highway because they get taken out of their own household by a person who. A mother who was trying to seek out PPOs who got them dismissed multiple times.

And the person that she was seeking a PPO out against ended up kidnapping her child and throwing that child out on the side of the road. But let's all worry about our next drink that we're going to take, you know, because that's more important, I think. Slash sarcasm, of course.

I think when everybody's really, really starting to take a gander at the world around them and let's holiday seasons and ringing those bells for people, oh, this is the time to give and it's like, why is this the only time of the year for you to give to anybody? What is wrong with you? You haven't seen what's been going on for months, for years, for centuries now. People have been needing help for a long time.

That's why people become in the dire straits that they're in. So I don't know, maybe. Why don't you. Maybe people should ask. Since peace on Earth is maybe coming one day, maybe we should kind of start asking.

The ability to more critically think and try to keep people safe and actually listen to people with reason and logic and not so much based upon what you think is wrong or right.

Why don't you actually get your head out of wherever it's been trapped and start actually critically thinking for yourself and start actually, I don't know, harnessing feelings and emotions that might help. That helps the healing process a lot. All right, I'm going to end this now.

I hope people are not stranded out there homeless, and that they can too eat or whatever they need. Try to help others out. Stay you. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for tuning in to RIPPER. You can find more about this and other LCC Connect podcasts at LCCconnect.com.